


Drive // Dan & Phil

by laughingcryingdying



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Phan - Freeform, Phan Fluff, Phanfiction, Road Trips, Roadtrip, Yikes, YouTube, ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7673704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingcryingdying/pseuds/laughingcryingdying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they leave, they go for different reasons. Dan is running away from his future, Phil is running towards his. Phil's pulled by the Aurora Borealis; gasses and light dancing across the sky, and Dan is drawn by a different kind of celestial body. As each state goes by and their destination gets closer and closer, the truth gets harder and harder to disguise, and the road they're driving on becomes uncertain; shaken by the buried feelings beneath the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drive // Dan & Phil

**Author's Note:**

> ayyyy so I wrote this awhile ago and thought I'd revisit it. who knows if I'll actually keep writing it. I have commitment issues to stories. I also haven't reread this in two months. the spacing might be a lil wonky because I pasted it from a google doc so sorry about that! I'm a mess so I'm not going to mess with it. anyway, enjoy!! :)

When Phil first said that they should go on a road trip, it was at two a.m. and Dan was half sure that he was talking in his sleep again.  
“I want to go on a road trip,” he’d mumbled. “D’you want to go on a road trip?”  
“Sure,” Dan had said absentmindedly, not looking up from his computer screen. “That sounds like a great idea.”  
He’d totally forgotten about that conversation until Phil came into his room at seven a.m. two weeks later.  
“Dan!” Phil shook him, and Dan groaned.  
“It’s still dark out, go away,” he muttered.  
“It’s seven in the morning! And it’s light out, see?” Phil jumped over a pile of socks to get to the window, pulling up the shade to let the bright sunlight in. Dan groaned again.  
“Why are you waking me up so early? I thought the point of summer was to sleep for three consecutive months.”  
“I’m gonna guess you have memory loss because you’re just waking up.”  
Dan groaned for the third time and then sat up, pushing his hair out of his face. “What’re you talking about?”  
“Today’s the day!”  
“For what?”  
“The road trip!”  
“Are you on drugs?”  
Phil’s eyes widened. “Do you really think I’d do drugs? Or that a drug dealer would ever take me seriously enough to even sell me drugs?”  
“Yeah, that’s true.”  
“Haven’t you been getting the emails? I just assumed that when you didn’t respond you were getting ready. I’ve been sending you links to stuff for last two weeks!”  
“Phil, I haven’t checked my email in two years.”  
“Oh.”  
Dan studied Phil. He’d been so excited when he’d first walked in, but now he looked totally dejected; and Dan hated that he’d crushed his dreams. But at the same time, how was he supposed to have known that Phil was actually being serious when he suggested a road trip? He’d said it at two a.m., and Phil had a record of saying weird things late at night. For example, how he’d said he wanted a tattoo of Beyonce’s face on his face.  
But Phil looked so sad. And Dan didn’t exactly want to stick around in Claremont for the whole summer. Or anywhere in this state in general.  
He sighed. “You know what? Fuck it. I’m in.”  
“Really?”  
“It’s not like I have anything else going on in my life. So where are we going?”  
Phil beamed, grabbing Dan’s laptop and plopping down next to him. “To see the aurora borealis.”  
“The what?”  
“The aurora borealis!” Phil passed the computer to Dan, where he’d pulled up Google Images. Dan looked at the screen. The pictures that Phil was clicking through didn’t look real–they were technicolored tie-dye patterns in the sky, iridescent shades of purple and green.  
“Shit.”  
“Isn’t it crazy beautiful?” Phil said, grinning.  
“It looks like someone broke glow sticks and then smeared them on the sky or something.”  
“Yeah, exactly!”  
Dan put the laptop down on his bed. “So where is this exactly?”  
“Well, I did a lot a research; to find out where the best place to see it is. the farther North you go the better, so like the Northeast. Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge in Maine.”  
“In Maine? How long is that going to take?”  
“Fifty hours.” Phil saw the look on Dan’s face and rushed on. “But think of it this way–it’s not just the destination, it’s the whole trip there! Think about everything that we can see on the way! We’ll go through big cities, and through mountains and coasts and everything. We can stay in each place for a few days and explore everything. Come on, Dan. You’ve been grumbling about how you don’t want to stay here this summer for the past month. And this is our chance to do something, instead of sit around in this town for three months. What if we never get to do anything like this? If we don’t do something crazy now, when will we?”  
Dan glanced at his laptop screen. “Alright. Let’s do something crazy now.”

 

NEVADA

Dan had never really driven a car above forty miles per hour. He wasn’t really into speed, not like the kids who drove mustangs to class and drag-raced on weekends. He’d never driven on the highway before, let alone been on a road trip, and driving fast made him nervous. Phil was sitting next to him, a map spread out on his lap and an open box of cereal balancing between his knees.  
A car honked behind them, and Dan glanced in the rearview mirror.  
“Dan?”  
“Mmm?”  
“You okay?”  
“Yeah, why?”  
Phil folded up the map. “D’you want me to drive?”  
“Thank you.” He pulled over on the shoulder and they switched seats.  
“Oh, I totally forgot!” Phil said as he pulled back onto the road. “I made a playlist for the drive. It’s on my phone.”  
“Okay.” Dan pulled up Spotify on Phil’s phone, and then groaned after he hit the play button. “Phil, is this all Disney music?”  
“There’s also some Spice Girls for variety. ”  
“I’m not listening to the Spice Girls for fifty hours.”  
“At the end of the trip you’ll know all the words! Don’t worry, though. It’s not actually fifty hours.”  
“Thank god.”  
“It’s fifty one.”  
“Phil!”  
He laughed. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s only like ten hours.”  
“You need to stop making jokes like that, you almost gave me a heart attack.”  
Phil shook his head. “You can try to deny it, but we both know you’d listen to fifty hours of the Spice Girls.”  
“Yeah, but no one else needs to know that.”  
They drove along in silence for a while, listening to the High School Musical soundtrack that Phil had added to the playlist. Out of the corner of his eye, Phil could see Dan tapping his fingers along to the music almost imperceptibly. After a while, the city gave way to the suburbs, and the suburbs gave way to nothing but flat ground. The sun glared down on them, and without any clouds or any real landmarks whatsoever, it was beginning to feel like they weren’t moving at all.  
“Hey, I think we’re in Nevada.”  
Dan looked up from the window. “Yeah?”  
“Well we’ve been driving for like four hours.” Phil flicked the turning signal on. “there’s a gas station up here, maybe we can ask.”  
“Thank god,” Dan said, already unbuckling his seatbelt. “I’ve had to pee for like five hours.”

When Dan got out of the bathroom, he found Phil in the little convenience store. “I guess we’re in Nevada,” he said, flicking one of the Nevada licence plate keychains that were hanging in rows next to the cash register.  
“I’m gonna get it,” Phil said, grabbing one. “I want to get something from every state that we go to.”  
Dan noticed something out of the corner of his eye and picked it up, dangling it in front of Phil’s face. “I think you should get this instead.”  
“Oh my god.” Phil’s eyes widened as he took the keychain from Dan. “I need it,” he said. It was a mini pair of false teeth attached to a chain, with NEVADA written in sparkly letters on the pink raised part. “D’you think this is real?”  
“Yeah, sure. Do you know any human that has a mouth that small? And why would someone have Nevada written on their dentures?”  
“So people know where they’re from. That way if they get lost and forget where they are, they can get back home.”  
“Stop talking. Do we need anything else?”  
“Yeah, snacks.”  
“Didn’t you bring food with?”  
“Yeah, but we ate it all already. I kind of underestimated how much we’d need.”  
“We ate it all?”  
Phil nodded, grabbing a can of Pringles from one of the shelves and adding it to the pile of Pop Tarts and candy bars he was holding. Dan opened his mouth to say that they should probably try to find some real food, but his phone started buzzing. He sighed when he saw who was calling. “I should probably take this. Meet you back in the car, okay?”  
“Mhm.” Phil added a bag of gummy worms to the pile.  
Dan walked back to the car and then realized that Phil had the keys. It was his car, after all. He hopped up on the hood and pressed the ACCEPT CALL button.  
“Hey mom.”  
“Daniel, where the hell are you? Why haven’t you been answering your phone; I called you three times.”  
“I’m not at home.”  
“Well then where are you?”  
“I’m in Nevada.”  
“Excuse me?”  
Dan closed his eyes. “I’m going away for the summer.”  
His mother scoffed. “Since when?”  
“Since today. And . . . I won’t be back for–a while.”  
“Daniel.” Her voice was sharp. “You have an internship this summer with the Latham and Watkins firm. That internship is essential, it will put you miles ahead of all the other students in your classes. It’ll put you on the path to get your J.D. early.”  
“Yeah, that’s the thing.” Dan pulled his legs up to his chest, taking a deep breath and getting ready for what was coming next. “I’ve been thinking about it for the past month, and I think I’m done. With law school.”  
“No, you’re not.”  
“Yes, I am. Tell dad that I said I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore.”  
“Daniel James Howell, if you don’t turn around and come back right this instant, I swear to God, your father and I will–”  
Dan ended the call, letting his phone drop onto his lap. He leaned back against the dash window and sighed.  
“Hey, are you okay?”  
Phil was standing a few feet away, arms laden down with plastic shopping bags.  
Dan forced a smile. He didn’t want to ruin this trip with his stupid family problems. And anyway, it would be nice to pretend they didn’t exist, at least for a little while. “It’s nothing.”  
Phil smiled, holding up a bag. “I got food.”  
They drove a few miles and then pulled off the road to eat. Phil rooted around in one of the bags, pulling a few things out.  
“This is all junk food,” Dan said. “Not that I’m complaining.” He grabbed a bag of Doritos and ripped it open.  
“There wasn’t really much variety.” Phil opened a Pop Tart, then bent down and grabbed a cinnamon roll from a bag, tossing it at Dan. “Here. You look like you need some sugar.”  
“Thanks.” Dan unwrapped it and took a bite. He looked around them. Everything was completely flat, except for the jagged, hazy outline of mountains in the distance. Once and awhile a car would pass on the highway, but other than that the road was completely empty. And very hot. Dan was starting to sweat out here under the sun in his dark t-shirt. He put the cinnamon roll down and got up.  
“Where’re you going?” Phil called after him.  
“I dunno!” He jogged away from the car, and then picked up to a run. Out here there was nothing, wherever he looked, expect for scraggly grass and bits of rock. He could keep going, for hours or days or weeks, and not find anything. What was the point of going back when there was more he could go?  
The heat hit him and he stopped, suddenly very aware of how out of shape he was. How did people actually run for fun? He’d only gone a hundred feet and he felt like he was about to cough up a lung.  
“Dan!”  
He turned to see Phil behind him, slowing to a stop. He rested his hands on his knees, breathless. “You really shouldn’t run like that,” Dan said. “It’s hot out here. You could pass out.”  
“Shut up. What are you doing?”  
Dan looked around, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “Um,” he panted. “I don’t know?”  
“Well the next time you decide to randomly sprint off into the desert, maybe give me a heads up, okay?”  
“Will do.”  
“Wow.” Phil stood up straight, looking around. “It’s empty out here.”  
“Right?”  
“It’s kind of weird.” Phil put his hand on his forehead, shielding his eyes from the sun. “There’s like, nothing. If you yelled no one would hear you. D’you think there are coyotes out here? Or wolves, or something?”  
“Probably.” Dan looked around, then cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled.  
“Dan!” Phil squeaked in surprise. “Oh my god, I thought you were getting murdered or something.”  
“Phil, I’m literally two feet away from you, I think you’d know if I was getting murdered.”  
“It could’ve been the coyotes.”  
Dan yelled again. At the top of his lungs. His voice became hoarse, but he kept yelling. It was so strange to make so much noise and have no one respond to it. To have no one even be aware of it. Next to him, Phil was doing something that sounded like a wolf howl.  
“Jeez, you’re going to summon the wolves here. And if they eat us no one will know.”  
Phil raised an eyebrow. “They could be friendly. Maybe have a hidden talent as the wolf whisperer. I could get my own show on the Discovery channel.”  
“Good luck with that.” Dan closed his eyes, stretching out his arms and swinging them back and forth. He took a deep breath of the heavy, dusty air, and let his arms fall to his sides.  
“We should get going. Someone might try to steal the car if we don’t leave.”  
“Like who? The wolves?”  
“You never know! They’re smart. A pack of them could probably figure it out.”  
Dan groaned. “You need to stop.”  
They walked back to the car, switched seats, and got back on the road. Now that they were in the middle of nowhere; with practically no one around, Dan wasn’t as afraid to drive fast. He couldn’t even crash if he tried.  
The highway gave way to the suburbs, which gave way to the subdivisions. “If I ever think about living here, kill me,” Dan said as the road curved past another neighborhood of identical houses, the same roofs and doors blending into an unending pattern.  
“It looks like someone copied a house and then just pasted it a million times.” Phil leaned against the window, looking out at the horizon. A breeze ruffled his dark hair, and he reached out one hand to catch the wind. The sun was starting to slip down the sky, bathing everything in a rosey glow.  
“I don’t understand how people know where their own house is. Like how do they find it? They’re all exactly the same.”  
“They probably go into the wrong houses all the time.”  
“So when are we stopping exactly?”  
“Well, I made a reservation in this motel in Utah, so we’re stopping when we get there. We have to check in by eleven; but we’re only a few hours away so we should be fine.”  
“Good. The sooner we get out of here the better. If I wanted to drive through suburbia, I would’ve just stayed home.”  
They spent the next hour driving in silence. Dan was happy to have someone that he could just be with, without trying to make conversation or be something he wasn’t to make the trip enjoyable. He could just be whatever he was at the moment, or whatever he wasn’t. The silence between them wasn’t heavy or awkward. It was just silence. And even though it was quiet, Dan could feel the air buzzing with the noise inside their heads.  
He studied Phil out of the corner of his eye. He was leaning against the window, the edges of his Converse propped up on the dashboard. The sun reflected off his eyes, turning them a crystalline shade of blue, and his knee was bouncing up and down slightly, moving the road map that was spread across his lap. Phil glanced at him, and Dan looked away; back out the window. He knew Phil could tell that something was off. That there was something Dan wasn’t telling him. Dan could tell that he wanted to say something, to ask him about the phone call. But he didn’t say anything. Dan didn’t either. He wanted to soak it all in; these last few moments where everything was okay before reality turned it all upside down.


End file.
